TNC Acquires Thousands of Acres to be Managed as the Maya Forest Project

The Nature Conservancy says that with the help of local and international partners it has acquired some two hundred and thirty-six thousand acres of the Belize Maya Forest for conservation work.  According to T.N.C., the idea of acquire the then privately owned property began way back in 2005. Program Director Julie Robinson tells News Five that they have since created a trust to manage and protect the land which protects more than seventy percent of the watershed in northern Belize and is hotspot for biodiversity and forms a bigger piece of Central American forest called the Selva Maya.  According to T.N.C., the protection of this area is fully aligned with the vision for a comprehensive National Protected Areas for Belize first championed in 2005 by then minister of government John Briceño. Robinson tells us more about Belize Maya Forest.

Julie Robinson

Julie Robinson, Program Director, The Nature Conservancy

“That area was one of the areas that really needed to be protected and included in Belize’s national protected areas system. So, it has been on everybody’s radar, on government, on NGOs radar for well over a decade. More recently, what has been happening is that both local and international organizations have come together and say look this is an area that is at threat of being deforested and clear cut and we need to come together and do something to protect it. So, based on that this coalition got together and were able to raise the funds to purchase the property from a US based private company. The important part of that is that what we are really doing is bringing that back to Belize because for over a decade now that has been owned by Forsland Group and they have been using it for sustainable logging but it has been closed off to any other access so it’s private property. Part of what we want to do is to do stakeholder engagement with buffer communities, or communities within the watershed, so that we can get a better understanding of how we can use this property in a way that aligns completely with the conservation goals that we want to see but also in a way that it will support the local economy, support the economy of Belize and also assist us to incorporate it within our national protected areas system.”